


such a funny thought to wrap you up in cloth

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [34]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abuse, Collegestuck, Derealization, Dissociation, Gen, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-05 11:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6703513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are Dirk Strider, and you have finally been pushed to your limit. You hate that it’s taken you so long. Your brother’s broken arm needs seeing to, and you, sick of lying for your guardian’s misdeeds, must find a way to tell someone the truth. By any means necessary. You’ll do it for Dave. You have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. was it all a disguise, like junior high?

**Author's Note:**

> Both guardians, Bro Strider and Mom Lalonde, are their beta versions. Just thought I should clear that up.

_November 2010_

Your name is Dirk Strider, Derrick Strider II, and your brother’s arm is almost certainly broken from his latest strife with Bro, who is actually your father. Your father, who is dead insistent that you learn to fight, by any means necessary.

Sighing, you reflect that isn’t even a fracture you can get set down at the urgent care clinic on Van Dam St.

First off, it’s too late for them to be open, and you’d drop dead before you made Dave endure a whole night of a fractured arm and no pain medication.

Second off, as you analyze his arm more closely, it seems like it’s broken in more than one place. It’s not a compound fracture, thank God, but you’re going to need a professional eye to ensure that it heals properly, and you will get one come hell or high water.

The closest major hospital is Elmhurst. You’ll take him there.

Bro stands in the kitchen and offers you all kinds of apologies, telling you how sorry he is that he went too far with Dave. He’ll drive you to the hospital, to wherever you need to go, he says.

You gaze at him through your oddly-shaped sunglasses - your _“dorito shades”_ as the girl, as your best friend, who lives two buildings away from you, calls them - and shake your head.

If Bro accompanies you to the hospital, if he breathes down your neck in the pediatric ER the way he always has when shit comes to this, you and Dave will have to improvise a lie to the triage nurse, and later to the doctor.

And you know what? You are sick and tired of lying to people about him.

You have reached your limit. You watch Dave’s mouth twitch and are willing to bet your entire allowance that he’s about to cry beneath his sunglasses.

While Bro may have only been your age, eighteen, when he ended up with two children, that doesn’t excuse a damn thing he’s done in your seventeen years and ten months of life.

It doesn’t excuse what you have done either, or what you have failed to do, more like.

Roxy and Rose got rid of their abusive excuse for a father figure, while you have…

Done nothing, nothing at all…

Done nothing but –

( _Take his lies as truth, believe that he was making you stronger, because he did make **you** stronger._

 _Your brother was a different story. He never wanted to fight. He just wanted to sit and play videogames with John_.)

Done nothing but –

( _Pride yourself on being better and stronger than Dave because **you could take it**._ )

Done nothing but –

— watch while Derrick Strider the first terrorized your younger brother under the guise of helping him become a man.

You gaze at Bro again, at the utter desolation in his tangerine-colored eyes eyes. 

It does not sway your resolve in the least.

Instead, the fact that he really believes his bullshit makes you even more furious.

“I’m taking Dave to the hospital,” you tell Bro. “We don’t need your help.”

For what it’s worth, he makes no attempt to stop you. No katanas in your face, no demands for you to prove your worthiness before you can get out the door.

You loop Dave’s good arm in yours and take him downstairs, out of your apartment building, at last. The two of your are rendered even more pallid beneath the streetlights.

“We’re going to Elmhurst Hospital,” you say to Dave, as you lead him toward the 7 train station.

He nods, and finds his voice.

“Whatever you say, man.” As if he doesn’t give a shit. As if he’s capable of ever being as unemotional as you or Bro ever were.

He winces when he has to go broken-arm first through the turnstile and onto the platform.

It has to be nearly midnight.

Your mind spins, skips, and grays out for a second, like a busted record on Dave’s turntables, but you drag it back with minimal difficulty.

You two stand and wait for the Flushing-bound train to arrive, which could take more than an hour given the time. You sit Dave down on one of the seats, and stare, standing at the edge of the platform, facing the direction in which the train will come.

After ten minutes of maintaining your position like a sentinel, you message your closest friend and hope that she is sober.

TT: I am on my way down to Elmhurst.  
TG: aint it a lil late to be goin to queens mall  
TT: To the hospital.  
TT: To get Dave seen.  
TG: o shit man  
TG: wat even happened  
TT: Bro, strife, a lot of things, Roxana.

It’s easier to refer to her by her full name while you’re trying to stay cucumber-cool. If you call her Roxy, even mentally, acknowledge her as the person who knows you best, your pretense of calm will disappear and you’ll end up standing there trying not to lose it, which will do nothing for Dave. He’s the one with the fractured limb. Then again, you might lose your cool either way. Roxy, then.

TG: he broke somethin didnt he  
TG: again  
TT: You are not wrong.  
TG: do u want me to go downstairs and kick bros ass i totes got this man

You think of furious fourteen-year-old Roxy in all her glory, back in sophomore year, holding a steak knife on him until he finally ran for it, and never returned, not even for his belongings.

Ms. Lalonde threw them out along with him, and threatened all kinds of things if he ever came back.

So Roxy most definitely has this if push comes to shove.

Of course, she was not the one to tell the story in this way; it was Rose who spilled the beans as you two sat side-by-side outside room 203, waiting for sixth period Honors English to begin. She wasn't particularly surprised about what Roxy did, nor was she surprised when their mother stepped in front of her two daughters, putting herself between them and her husband, because that's what she's always done, pushed her daughters back so they wouldn't be the punching bag. But when Rose caught sight of the fury written on every inch of her mother's face, when the slight woman straight up promised to kill him, if she ever saw him again, then Rose was surprised.

Roxy messaged you with two lines of text immediately after her father ran, and she was most definitely hammered when she did.

TG: so i got rid of our dad and mom and rosie helped so everyone high five us  
TG: all hail roxy nd rose nd mom ur all the fuckin shit

You turn your head away from the past, and into the present, where Dave sits alone, shivering, with his broken arm held stiffly and bent against his side.

You jam your phone into the pocket of your jeans, remove your sweatshirt onehandedly, and toss it to him. Instead of catching it, he flinches.

_Why must you look so much like Bro?_

Dave picks it up off the ground easily enough, quickly enough, and puts it on, shoving his broken arm through the hole with his teeth clenched. Though you two look similar and you only possess a year’s seniority over him, your sweatshirt practically drowns him.

He lacks your height and muscle tone. He was not made for strife. Not like you.

Not like you, who jumped in front of him dozens, hundreds of times. Not like you, who could take it. Not like Dirk Strider, who can endure almost anything and walk away with an air of smug satisfaction.

You sit down next to him.

“You okay, man? You looked cold.”

He swipes at the area directly beneath his shades with his sleeve, your sleeve really, and nods, seeming to turn inward. He crumples into a ball, like a sheet of looseleaf, and you wrap an arm around him, letting him rest his head against your shoulder.

“You’re going to be fine, Dave,” you try to assure him. “I’m taking you down to Elmhurst.”

“You already said that.”

“They can set your arm properly at a real hospital,” you babble. “I’m so sorry, so sorry, I am so sorry about everything, please believe me.”

You cover your eyes with your hands, and feel the jagged points of your sunglasses digging into your palms.

You resist the urge to retch on the platform and spatter the concrete with vomit.

The train comes, you remove your shades, and you shove them into your back pocket. You don’t care if they break during the ride. You almost hope they do. Then you’ll get a pair like Dave’s, round and unobtrusive, and you will become something other than a person Bro has nearly molded into his perfect image.

You stare at your reflection in the adjacent window. Your glasses, now hidden on your person, continue to resemble his. Your eyes are orange like his. You could be him, but younger, not _quite_ as awful.

Or maybe _more awful_ for priding yourself on taking the higher ground - _you strifed with robots, never your brother_ \- while managing to do nothing to rectify that situation.

Derrick Strider II. Your fate was sealed from the moment you were named, you suppose.

However, you can do something, no, you _will_ do something. You can take your rare strengths and cash them in to accomplish _good_. You can get Dave away from Bro. You’ll tell the nurses and the doctors the truth, finally, at long last.

Bro always threatened you two with the realities of the foster care system when (usually) you promised to drop a dime on him.

“I was a foster kid my whole life,” he said. “Trust me, they’ll make this place look like summer camp. You guys are fuckin’ lucky to have me, hope you know.”

Nevertheless, how much worse can a foster family be than your legal guardian? You’ll come of age in December, and then you’ll take your younger brother away with you.

You’ll get more hours at your job, drop out of school if you have to, and find an apartment.

He only needs to live with this hypothetical family - _awful as they might be_ \- until the second of December.

Then you’ll be eighteen.

You’ll be an adult. You’ll be able to intervene.

( _“But what if the people in the hospital don’t believe you, Dirk? You and David have lied for so long,”_ the little douchebag living in your head asks you.

You’ll make them believe. You’ll call Roxy, Rose, whoever’s awake and let them tell the stories. You’ll call Jane and Jake. John and Jade. Anyone. Everyone. As long as they know what Dave’s gone through. You’ll call them all, put them them on speaker, let them explain the truth, as they know it, from the beginning.

Particularly Roxana and her sister, who have known you two for so long.)

You lose yourself in theoreticals to the point where you don’t hear Dave talking immediately. It takes a while for the sound of his speech to float down to you in distorted tones, as you sit mired in the hurricane of your thoughts.

“I know it’s late, but can I please speak to her?” He asks, voice low to the point of being almost raspy.

You turn to face him, and it turns out that he’s on his phone.

It also turns out that you’ve passed several stations in the interim.

You need to pay more attention to your surroundings, Dirk. Quit… _what does Rose call it? Dissociating?_ Yeah, quit doing that, before you miss your stop.

 _(If I’m not all there, and David’s not all there, then who’s driving the train?_ you think helplessly.)

“Who are you talking to?” You whisper.

He shrugs quickly, biting back the frisson of pain that must have shot through him with the motion. His front teeth bury themselves in his lower lip hard enough to draw blood. You snap your fingers in his face to bring him to attention.

“Who are you talking to?” You repeat.

“Latula,” he mouths.

 _Latula who?_ You wonder quietly.

This is what you get for spending so much time in Mr. Ali-Zadeh’s robotics lab instead of interacting with real people. This is what you get for spending the remainder of your free time either strifing with Bro or working.

You wouldn’t know about 65% of Dave’s friends if you tripped over them, and you go to school with most of them.

You gesture at him to give you the phone, perhaps too abruptly, because he cringes, and nearly drops it.

Why do you have to resemble Bro? Why can’t you resemble the mother you barely remember? 

You put a hand on Dave’s knee and mime the act of deep breathing, your other hand resting against your diaphragm. You think of Roxana doing her breathing exercises before she goes to Chorus, struggling to copy her.

 _Breathe, David. Breathe. Don’t faint now. Even if I could carry you all the way from the train station to the hospital, which I can, I don’t know if I could explain everything without you. Don’t make me do this alone_.

You, Dirk, are a coward of the first degree, don’t ever let anyone think otherwise.

You chide Roxana for trying to drink away her issues, for swilling down vodka and cranberry cocktails on her anti-anxiety medication, but at least she confronts them when she has to. When all the cards are down, she’s braver than you will ever be, by far.

She’s earned the right to the occasional and merciful stupor of intoxication, you figure.

You just wish she’d stop hanging around people who enable her.

Eridan. Gamzee. Vriska. You never really cared for any of them. Sure, there’s your uneasy truce with Eridan. And your realization that Gamzee, while constantly blazed, is essentially harmless.

But Vriska? You just can’t think of any good qualities she possesses.

Dave hands the phone over to you.

“Hello?” You ask.

“Dave?”

The accent and cadence are familiar enough, even if the tone isn’t quite. The woman on the other end must be a Pyrope. If not, she’s a dead ringer for one.

“Nah, this is his brother.”

“Oh,” she responds, almost warily. “Bro?”

You wince as if someone’s run you through with your fencing foil, then twirled it around with abandon to see how many organs they could skewer in the process. You want to fall over.

It’s not her fault, though.

How would she know? You’ve never been to the Pyropes’. You’re not the Strider halfway dating one of them.

“No, not Bro. I’m Dirk the second,” you tell her. “Same grade as Dave and everything.”

She inhales audibly.

“I see. Wow, dude. I’m real sorry about that,” she goes on. “Didn’t mean to call you… well, you get what I’m saying.”

Even so, she informs you that Dave cannot speak to Terezi. She’s asleep, and she pulled an all nighter yesterday night. Latula, who is apparently Terezi’s older sister, refuses to wake her up.

“Come on, it’s an emergency,” you beg.

You have no idea why Dave would want to speak to his girlfriend of all people at the moment, but you’re not gonna question. This is your little brother.

Out of all your relations - _and you include yourself here_ \- you trust his judgment the most.

While Latula chides you for calling so late, you ponder this further. Why did he call Terezi? Why her, instead of John? Or Rose? Or Jade?

And you know romantic love runs deep, but seriously? All of them live closer to the hospital than Terezi does. Except John, who lives way the hell in Bay Ridge.

_Hold up._

_The hospital,_ you realize.

You recall the person who patched up your strife injuries in front of a jittery and utterly nervous Bro a few months ago, over at the place you’re taking your brother to.

Her white plastic nametag, affixed to the v-neck collar of her scrubs, glinted in the light as she stitched up your wounds.

You told her that you fell down a flight of stairs, and landed sharply on scrap metal. Her teal eyes flashed incredulously, but she never pursued the matter further.

Still, she gave you a tetanus booster and prescribed you some painkillers to take for the next few days, which was odd, because you didn’t know nurses could write scripts.

You contemplate her nametag again.

_Carmela Pyrope. Nurse Practitioner._

You swallow deeply. You’re not sure who Carmela is in relation to Latula or Terezi, but you know they have the same last name and you know that she is a clinician of some sort.

“Is Carmela around?” You ask Latula, grasping for straws.

Dave stares at you pointedly, gesticulating without saying a word.

“Mami?” Latula pauses before she speaks.

She mutters her confusion in soft Spanish that you partially understand for all the time you’ve spent around Roxy and Rose. “She’s at work, Dirk. She works the night shift.”

Your next question issues almost desperate. As desperate as you can sound. “Where? What does she do?”

If everything is as you suspect, you need to find out.

“She’s a nurse in the pediatric emergency room, over at Elmhurst.”

Well, then.

“That makes sense,” you reply. “Thanks.”

Latula starts talking again, telling you how this makes absolutely no sense, how she’d like an explanation whenever you feel the need to give one, but you hang up on her. You’ll bring her up to speed at some point in the future, whether recent or distant. Eventually.

“Carmela’s working tonight,” you tell Dave.

He lets out a relieved breath you didn’t know he was holding.

You two get off at 82nd street, and you start steering him south, toward the bright red sign in the distance that reads “Emergency”. The building looms over you like a nightmare, so much larger now. It could swallow you up.

Dave appears to share your impression. He tries to surreptitiously shuffle back toward the train station. You shiver in the November night, and grab him back by the end of your hoodie. He shakes his head, emphatically.

“I don’t want to go in. I’ll be fine,” he says.

He won’t.

“We gotta go in. Your arm’s broken.“

"Why don’t we just go back home and wait until the clinic opens?”

“I think your arm is too fucked up to wait until 9 am.”

You don’t bother to add that you have far more experience with strife injuries, so you would know. Dave stands in place, not going in, but not trying to escape.

“Bro’s not here, dude. What’re we gonna tell them?”

At least this is a question you can sort of answer.

“The truth, Dave.”

If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it.

“The truth, truth?”

“Yeah, man. The truth, truth.”

“The legit truth, truth?” he asks with a shadow of a smile.

“Gonna be the truthiest, yo.”

“Okay.” Dave balls up his fists and gazes at the main hospital entrance. “I think I’m ready.

You raise a skeptical eyebrow

“You sure?”

“Nope,” he says, and dashes inside before he can change his mind.

In the waiting room, the overhead lights are practically blinding without your shades, but you refuse to put them back on. Without any extra support from you, Dave stumbles his way over to the receptionist.

“M’arm’s broken,” he says, lifting it to show her the fracture.

He answers a few more questions, quivering like a leaf all the while.

“A nurse will be around to assist you shortly,” the woman says. “In the meantime, could I get your name and date of birth?”

He mumbles them. She asks him to speak up, and that’s where you come in.

“David Strider, date of birth twelve-three-ninety three.”

She makes note of this on her computer, and peers up at you, adjusting her glasses.

“And you are?”

“His brother,” you reply. “His older brother.”

She blinks at you for a minute. She turns, as if addressing you and not Dave. “A triage nurse will be around to assist him shortly.”

“Cool.”

You steer Dave into one of the faux-leather padded seats in the waiting room, and plop yourself down next to him. Then, you check your phone, noting that you have a few missed messages on Pesterchum.

TG: u alrite there  
TG: rosies worried too  
TG: so uh  
TG: yeah  
TG: reply 2 this wen u get it yo  
TT: I am fine, and sitting with Dave in the waiting room.  
TG: u sure ur fine  
TT: Certain.  
TG: watever  
TG: lemme know if u need anythin  
TG: or if he needs anythin  
TT: I will.

You tell Dave to check his texts, and, unsurprisingly, there are several from Rose.

He responds to them with his functional hand as a means of distraction. You wonder what she’ll have to say. While Roxy is the more confrontational Lalonde, Rose is the more thoughtful one. 

Probably a lot, then. She’s more than likely typed up paragraphs worth of questions for him.

At long last, the triage nurse calls for “Strider, David Elizabeth”, and you instinctively rise with him. He puts out his hand in front of you, and tells you that he’s got this.

“I can do this myself,” he says.

Right, okay.

He disappears into triage.

You’ll just wait here, then. Wait and watch whatever’s on television, some iteration of Law and Order, you’re nearly certain. But that’s not what you do. You lose yourself in your thoughts, again.

If Dave doesn’t talk, you’re going to have to, and you know your brother too well to really believe that he’ll say a goddamn thing to anyone. You wonder what lie he’s spinning to whoever’s assessing him as to how he managed to break his arm in what felt - to you, when you gave him a once-over - like two places. You wonder about his temperature? You know he’s getting over an autumn cold. Is he still feverish? Has he gained or lost weight? What about his blood pressure? It’s probably high, because he’s stressed out.

You should have gone across the street to the Lalonde apartment, asked Roxy for one of her lorazepam, and given it to Dave before you brought him over to this place. 

Unlike you, seldom fazed by anything, Dave despises hospitals. He associates them, fairly accurately, with Bro and his various fuckups.

Dave emerges from triage wearing a little white wristband containing his information, and looking slightly less afraid, as he returns to you.

“They wanna take me straight into the ER, get a doc to fix me, and get me out as quickly as possible. They got more important stuff to do,” he informs you. “I’ll be right back.”

This time, you rise in earnest. 

Already, the gears in your mind are turning, as you formulate a tenuous plan. As it so happens, your plan is contingent on your getting out of this waiting room and into the hospital proper.

“I’m coming with you,” you insist.

He graces you with a faint grin, and lets you trail after him. The triage nurse eyes you skeptically.

“And you are?” He asks.

“His older brother.”

“How old are you, exactly?”

“Eighteen.”

You’re not sure if you’ll be able to accompany him if you’re younger than that.

He does not argue the point with you, or ask you for ID, leading Dave to an empty bed on the pediatric side. He pulls the curtains to give you two some privacy. The wall behind you has been decorated with cutouts of dinosaurs and other juvenile shit.

The two of you listen to the wailing of sick children, to the sound of parents trying to shoosh them.

You barely remember this kind of thing from the last time you were here. Those painkillers they gave you must have been some A-grade stuff.

You ask Dave if he’ll be alright if you decide to leave him alone for a bit.

“Don’t worry about it, man.” He gestures to the television, already flipping through channels. “I’m good.”

You are going to worry about it. In fact you will worry yourself more neurotic than usual, but you have to leave him for now. Especially if he’s going to get seen quickly. There’s someone you need to find first.

You could tell the doctor who’ll arrive to set his fracture, but you are not particularly known for your revelatory nature. You don’t know if you can even tell the person you have in mind’s eye, but you know you have a better chance of telling her everything than anyone else.

So you walk over to some random doctor and tap him on the shoulder.

“Can I help you?” He asks, tilting his head to one side in confusion.

“Have you, uh…” Shit, Dirk, keep it together. “Have you seen Nurse Pyrope, by any chance?”

“She’s on break,” he replies. He straightens out his white coat.

“So what’s that mean? Where is she?”

He gives you a weary look like he’s tired of humoring you, like he has about a million better things to do.

“In the cafeteria, I would assume.”

“Thanks, man.”

You saunter away from him, and out of the ER. No use in lingering on people who want nothing to do with you.

You ask an orderly where the cafeteria is and get spectacularly lost due to his shitty directions. And it takes you a while, but you do find it. You walk in, and scan the area for someone who looks like the nurse you remember. There are too many dead-eyed people in scrubs to make this task even vaguely easy.

In the end, it’s not you who find her, but she who finds you. She walks up to you, coffee in hand, and teal eyes glassy with exhaustion, but alert.

“You’re Dirk Strider, aren’t you?” She asks. And before you can answer, “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Dave’s arm’s broken.” It occurs to you that she may not be aware of who Dave is. He didn’t come with you to get checked out last time. “My little brother, he’s like, this tall.” You gesture to the tip of your nose. “And got on these round sunglasses, ma’am.”

“Oh, him!” She exclaims. “I know him. He and my daughter, well…”

She trails off with a small smile.

Of course she knows Dave. He goes to Terezi’s after school more often than not. So you are not only a coward, Dirk, but a supreme moron.

“Yeah, um, him.” You try your best to smile back. “Thing is, there’s something I gotta talk to you about.”

“To me,” she repeats.

You don’t care if you sound desperate now, you really could not give less of a flying fuck. You reach for her hand, and instead of pulling away, she takes it. Hers is warmer than yours, by far.

“Please, Nurse Pyrope.”

“Well, alright. And you can call me Carmela.”

She must be fast on the uptake, because she seems to instinctively realize that whatever you have to tell her is not the sort of thing that should be made privy to the whole cafeteria. She leads you to an empty observation room on some random ward.

Standing before her, Carmela Pyrope, who so resembles Terezi, despite her lighter skin tone and the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, you sit down on the bed. As if she’s assessing you, as someone else assesses your brother.

“What’s wrong?” She asks. She gazes at the palm of your hand, the one she’s not holding.

You look down, and notice a scrape on it. A bruise on your forearm. All of a sudden, you wish you hadn’t given Dave your hoodie. You know where the bruise came from, but the scrape?

You rack your brains until something approaching a memory hits you.

Oh yeah. You tripped while you were climbing up the stairs to the 40th Street station. You used your hands to break your fall, and since you weren’t wearing your fingerless gloves, you guess you fucked one of them up.

Why don’t you remember this?

You contemplate Rose Lalonde and her all-too-meditative eyes, and the way she explained the concept of dissociation to you in freshman year.

_Did you…? Were you…?_

You vaguely remember Dave helping you up. Asking you if you were okay. As if he should have to ask you that, with all he’s dealing with. Your brother’s arm is broken in more than one place and you couldn’t even muster the mental fortitude to hold your awareness where it needed to be.

“I fell on it,” you tell Nurse Pyrope. “Seriously.”

She says nothing, but as usual, you can sense her incredulity over an excuse used one time too many.

“While we were going up the stairs on Lowery Street. Cause I knew Dave had to get to an actual hospital so I dragged him over to the train station to get him here, and I wasn’t paying attention, and I tripped over a stair…” You’re babbling again. You force yourself into silence.

She leaves you for a minute to flip the light on, to grab disinfectant and a bandage. She beckons you over to the sink, cleans out your wound - _it really isn’t that bad, you’ve seen worse on yourself_ \- rinses it, and dresses your hand as if it’s second nature. At this point in her career, it probably is.

She closes the door behind her, and leans against the wall adjacent to the bed.

“So, Derrick,” she begins.

You want to flip all ten of your shits and insist to her that your name is not Derrick. Derrick is the dipshit with the goatee. You are Dirk, you have been Dirk since Roxy couldn’t pronounce your actual name in 1997, and you are going to be Dirk until you die.

“I remember you from the time Bro brought me here, and like, you did the stitches and medical shit, and I thought if I could tell anyone about this, I could tell you,” you continue. “We called Terezi and Latula, who said you were working tonight, so after Dave got into the ER, I started looking for you. Because maybe I can tell you. Maybe I can tell you everything.”

You dig your shades out of your back pocket and put them on. You hate the reminders they give you, the little asshole in your head drawing comparisons between you and Bro. but you need to hide. You can’t handle this woman’s unyielding gaze without a shield.

_You are a coward, you are an idiot, you are contemptible._

You just want to take your skin, your bones, your frame, shed it and walk away from it for a while. You want to check out. You want to…

( _“Issues with attention and working memory are common among people who have endured circumstances similar to yours,”_ Rose says coolly. You almost check to see if she’s standing behind you.)

And you want, you want…

You want the oblivion of dissociation. You don’t want to be here. You don’t want to do this.

But you can’t check out if you want to tell Carmela Pyrope what someone needs to know. Someone with authority needs to know, someone who can get Dave away from Bro forever.  Your little brother never deserved any of this. You must do this for him.

You keep babbling, keep confessing, words issuing faster than you ever thought they could from your mouth. You’re afraid to stop, lest you lose your momentum.

“And Bro, he tries. He’s trying to make us into strong men who can fend for ourselves, but he doesn’t… He’s not,” you grab the edge of the bed to keep you steady, to keep you focused on his moment. “He’s physical a lot of the time–” _Stop euphemizing, Dirk._ “–he’s physically violent, a lot of the time. He’s been like that since we were kids, and we thought it was normal for the longest. I dunno if he’s trying to be abusive but he… He’s done a lot of fucked up stuff.”

Carmela nods. She’s begun scrawling information on her clipboard. You tell her about the challenges. About the shitty swords in your living room. 

You leave out the smuppets because Bro, by and large, tried to keep you away from that, even when he left them lying around.

You don’t need her to think that he’s some kind of pervo freak as well. You don’t believe that he is, at least.

“When you patched me up, it wasn’t ‘cause I fell down. It was because of Bro. No matter what we did, no matter how hard we tried, he, just… Him and his fucking strife… And I never did anything.”

She steeples her fingers, and levels you in a gaze teeming with sympathy and sorrow. “ _Too right_. You never did anything. You didn’t do a damn thing to warrant such treatment, from your guardian, no less.”

Fuck.

“No, no, you misunderstand.” You grab hold of the thin fabric of her teal scrub shirt. “ _I never did anything_. I didn’t _do anything_ to get Dave out.”

The record of your mind skips on its turntable again. You gray out.

The next you know, Carmela Pyrope is holding your hand again. 

You’re not crying because you can’t cry. Years of being the way you are has robbed you of the ability. 

However, your mouth opens and closes like a fish’s, as if you’d like to.

You’ve been an awful brother, but Carmela doesn’t seem to think so.

“You’re doing something now, Dirk,” she tells you. “Something immeasurably difficult, I might add. And it should have never been on you to act, it should have been on your guardian to _not_ act in the way he did.”

She makes one last note on her clipboard. She spares a final glance at your forearm and asks if you consent to a physical examination.

“I’d like to document any injuries he may have given you, with your permission, of course.”

Right. Right. That’ll strengthen the case or whatever. You shed your shirt and jeans with astounding speed, standing in front of Nurse Pyrope in nothing but your boxers. She scrutinizes almost every inch of you, writing things down where necessary. 

Whenever you feel like slipping away again, you remind yourself of Dave. Eventually, she tells you to put your clothes back on, which you do.

You still have a question for her, though, perhaps the most important question of the night.

“We don’t have to go back to Bro’s, do we?”

This otherwise kindly woman looks patently furious at the very idea, opening the door, leading you out of the room, and back toward the ER.

“I should think not.” She says, strolling briskly down the hallway. You do your best to keep up with her. “However, I will also need someone to speak with David.”

“Could you?” You ask. “Be the one to talk to him, I mean.”

She considers this for a moment. “I could be, assuming he hasn’t apprised the doctor setting his arm of the true situation.”

“He wouldn’t. He’s not like that.”

After all is said and done, she is the one to talk to Dave, asking you to sit down in a chair in the ER until she’s finished. You stare at the sick, crying children, and all the solicitous mothers and fathers trying to soothe them, and you’re inexplicably jealous.

You never got to experience that. Maybe from Roxy’s mom, when she was sober enough to recognize that you were in her apartment, but… not from yours. And certainly not from Bro.

Real men don’t cry - regardless of sickness or pain - and he expected you to become one of those. And so you have. Nearly, anyway.

For once, you wish you could cry, that you possessed that capability. It might make you feel better.

You try to call the hazy memories you have of your actual mother into mind, and find that you can’t. A clipped phrase there, a vague outline there, but nothing more. 

She left while you were… fuck, you can’t even remember the year. It’s not as if anyone kept pictures of her around.

Carmela brings some man in a white coat over to Dave’s bed, after a bit. She leaves again, and returns with three wristbands in her hand. One white, and two green.

She takes your blood pressure - 113/70, your heart rate - 120, your temperature - 97.9, and something called SpO2, which is 99. 

You agree to let her hook the white wristband, and one of the green ones around your left wrist. You don’t know why she does, though. You’re not the injured one. You’re fine.

“The doctor with your brother will want to speak to you soon, but before that, I need to know something, and it’s important that you answer truthfully.”

“Go for it.”

She crouches so that she’s eye-level with you.

“Is there a place can go instead of your apartment for the foreseeable future?”

There are about a million places. You’d sleep under the Queensboro Bridge if you had to, although you’d drop Dave off at John’s first. Something in your expression must betray at least a few of your thoughts, because she adds, “A domicile containing a responsible adult over the age of twenty-five, who happens to be familiar with you and Dave. Otherwise we can’t discharge either of you. You’d have to wait for CPS to place you in emergency housing.”

CPS. Child Protective Services. Shit, she’s talking about the foster care people. Fuck, fuck, shit. You rack your brains, consider asking Carmela if you can stay with her, and figure that if that were an option, she would have said something.

“Give me a minute,” you tell her.

“Take as much time as you wish.” She raises the other green wristband. “Meanwhile, I’ll continue to tend to your brother.”

You want to know when you can see him, but you have to text someone first, and pray to god that this goes according to plan.

TT: Are you still awake, Roxy?  
TG: im always fuckin awake di stri  
TG: moms keepin an eye on the booze cabinet  
TG: so i gotta wait her out till she knocks out  
TT: I have a question to ask of you.  
TT: A favor, to be honest.  
TG: go for it man  
TT: Is your mother sober at the moment?  
TG: i think so  
TG: shes been like way cuttin back man  
TG: but lemme check

You pray to god that she is. You don’t think anyone here will discharge you or Dave to her care otherwise.

TG: yea she is one hundred percent bone dry  
TT: You’re certain  
TT: I need a favor.  
TG: i am trust me i am the expert  
TG: wuts this about anyways  
TT: You know how Dave and I are at the hospital.  
TG: duh  
TG: im gonna wring bros neck swear on my gpa  
TT: We need someone to pick us up, someone who is not Bro.  
TT: Do you think Ms. Lalonde would be up to it?  
TG: ok gimme a minute

You do. You give her several, in fact. Her handle goes idle before she finally comes back.

TG: i told her kinda wat happened  
TG: i think shes gonna kill bro herself even tho i called first dibs  
TG: shes gettin dressed and stuff  
TG: think itll take her like an hour to get there tops  
TG: lemme text u her # so u can call her

You inform Carmela that you have a responsible adult (relatively speaking, though you leave that out) who is willing to pick you up and let you stay with her, although you have yet to ask Roxy’s mom about the latter. Carmela seems satisfied with this.

“Of course, we’ll need to speak with her face-to-face, first,” she says. “And either way, we have to notify Child Protective Services.”

Another white-coated doctor comes over to talk to you once Carmela is out of sight, over in the nurses’ station, but he seems a little less like an asshole than the one you asked for directions before. In fact, you think he’s the one who’s been talking to Dave.

“My name is Dr…..” You detach from yourself before you can catch it, either from feeling overwhelmed or bone-tired. “…and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

They’re all variations on the same theme of the shit you confessed earlier. He takes notes even more carefully than Nurse Pyrope did.

However, he asks you a whole shitload about your feelings and emotions toward what you’ve gone through. You haven’t really gone through that much, really. Nothing you couldn’t handle. You’re not quite sure how to answer those, you don’t like considering them, so you stick to curt responses.

Gray threatens at the edges of your awareness.

After he’s finished, he apologizes for forcing you to repeat yourself.

“It’s as my colleague says, then,” he replies. “I’ll tell her to give you something for your anxiety.”

You gaze closely at his identification and catch the words “Child and Adolescent Psychiatry” before he too takes his leave.

 _What in the fuck?_ You want to know. _You’re not crazy. Okay, you are crazy, but you don’t think you’re anxious. Or any more anxious than this whole thing warrants._

You gaze around at the children you can see, the ones whose curtains are not drawn for whatever reason. Only one of them wears a green wristband, and she’s a weeping, shaking wreck of a girl whose parents can’t seem to do anything to calm her down. 

They catch you staring and pull the curtains shut.

_Great._

You have the sneaking suspicion that only the head cases get green wristbands.

 _Congratulations, Dirk._ Not only are you a coward, a moron, and contemptible, but you are also certifiably fucking _insane._

Just what you needed to hear tonight.

You lose touch with the passage of time again, slowly phasing yourself out of the here and now.

You look at your white wristband.  
  
Strider, Derrick Evelyn. 17 M. DOB: 12/02/1992.

So many twos that you’d make Roxy’s rival - Captor, isn’t it? - jealous. You turn it around and around on your wrist.

 _Who are you, Dirk Strider?_ You ask yourself. _Are you real? Are you really real?_

_What does real mean, anyway? Is anyone real?_

Carmela returns with a styrofoam cup of water and a little medication cup containing a single unopened pill blister. She opens it front of you without touching it, and deposits it in the clear plastic cup.

“Diazepam, five milligrams,” she tells you. “To help you calm down.”

You nod, numbly, tip the pill into your mouth, and take a gulp of water.

She asks you to open your mouth and raise your tongue so she can ensure that you’ve actually taken it.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, but it’s standard procedure.”

You nod, and through the haze, realize what you need to ask.

“When can I see Dave?”

“Right now, if you want.”

You dash toward where you think his bed is, and draw a curtain open, yanking it shut behind you. You don’t care if anyone else needs to talk to him, because right now you need your brother.

Maybe he can attest to your existence. Maybe he can make you real.

You have to make sure he’s there, that something didn’t go dreadfully wrong.

You have to make sure he doesn't hate you for telling someone about Bro. You should have seriously asked him how he felt about it before you did it.

This is why your relationship with Jake imploded, your penchant for plunging blithely ahead and assuming you always know the best for people without consulting them. And you’ve done it yet again. Go Dirk, you are on a roll tonight.

“Fuck, man, I was wondering where you went,” he says, the second he notices you. He looks spaced out as fuck. Maybe they gave him some of the A-grade shit. You take one look at his full-arm cast and your head spins.

You sit down at the foot of his bed. He raises his good fist. It takes you some time to realize what he wants, but when you do, you bump it as confidently as you can.

“I had to get some things done. A lot of things,” you reply.

He throws you the TV remote.

“No shit?” He snorts. “Mrs. Pyrope and all these doctors wanted to ask me stuff after they put my arm in this thing.”

You switch the channel to Comedy Central, and South Park is on. At least this much is normal.

“What’d you tell them?”

He shrugs without wincing.

“The truth, I guess. Was I supposed to…?”

He trails off without finishing. You’re not known for being demonstrative, at all, but you hug him, careful not to aggravate his cast.  “Whatever you wanted, man. No right or wrong answers.”

“Are they dead ass when they said we don’t have to go back to Bro’s?” He asks, face buried in your shirt. You stare down at him.

“So dead ass. The most dead ass. As dead ass as humanly possible.”

He smiles, closes his eyes briefly, and then snaps back to attention. He takes out his phone and shows you all the messages he’s gotten, every single one in lavender text.

“Rose says we’re gonna stay with her for a while,” he says. “Like she said way more than that, but I’m giving you the Sparknotes here.”

You laugh in spite of yourself, feeling the slightest bit lighter.

At some point, whatever they gave you for anxiety kicks in with a vengeance, and you start to drift off. So does Dave.

Even when you’re awakened by the sound of close, familiar voices, he continues to snore, evenly and deeply.

_“…and I’d be more than glad to care for them for as long as needed. They’re like sons to me, the both of them…”_

Like sons to her.

Your heart lodges in your throat.

You think of all the afternoons and evenings you and Dave have spent in the Lalonde apartment over the years. Even during her worst bouts with alcoholism, she was always kind. Almost jovial, really. Always wanted to know how you were doing. Proud when you got good grades, all that kind of shit.

In return, you two gave her all of the truth and none of the honesty.

Then, comes Nurse Pyrope’s voice.

“Well, if that’s the case, I’ll need to print out some documents for you to sign,” she says. “Their discharge papers, which the doctor has to write up, among other things…”

“That’s fine,” the other woman says. “Is there any particular place I should wait?”

“You may wait with them. They’re right here.”

Someone pulls the curtain open slowly, giving you time to adjust to the light. 

And there stands Roxana Lalonde the first, Ms. Lalonde to you, wearing her usual black and white jacket, her long blonde hair neatly arranged in a braided chignon. Her fuchsia eyes linger on the pair of you.

“Hey there, sleepyheads,” she murmurs, sitting down in the chair adjacent to the bed. Since you’re the conscious one, she ruffles your hair. “¿Qué tal, Dirk?”

“Nothing much,” you tell her. You don’t trust yourself to stay calm if you say anything further.

What could you tell her? That it took all these years for you to finally blow the whistle on Bro? That you’re a disgrace of an older brother? You don’t want to give voice to any of that. All she’ll do is worry, probably.  

Especially if she’s sober. You wonder how long that’s been going on. It’s not the sort of thing you feel comfortable asking, even though you feel more chill now than you have in ages.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it at the moment,” she begins, voice hitching ever-so-slightly. “But you’re going to be okay. You’ll be safe. I’ll make sure of it.”

That’s when she steadies herself, wearing the same determined expression that you’ve seen on Roxy so many times. You reach out to her, and she touches your arm, right at the spot above the bruise. She puts her head in one hand, muttering to herself more than you.

“I wish I’d known, _I_ of all people. I should have seen the signs, how could I have been so _irresponsible_? So _oblivious_?”

In your estimation, Ms. Lalonde had so much else to deal with. She should hardly blame herself. You weren’t her responsibility when you weren’t in her apartment. And she never once raised a fist against you or anyone else.

You tell her this, and she shakes her head.

“Still, I could have done _something_.”

She rocks back and forth for a second or two, and then folds her hands, as if in prayer.

“I hope you can forgive me for my behavior, for my oversight,” she says. “If you can’t, it’s no less than what I deserve.

You nod weakly. “Nothing to forgive, Ms. Lalonde.”

You two will have to agree to disagree, she says.

Dave snuffles in his sleep once, wakes up, and stares at her in stoned confusion. They definitely gave him the good shit; he has achieved Gamzee levels of psychoactive altitude.

“ _Mom?_ ” He asks. He removes his sunglasses, rubs his eyes, and shakes his head. “Wait, sorry, my bad.”

Ms. Lalonde does nothing but smile. Dave props himself up on one arm.

“So we’re going with you, right?”

“That appears to be the case,” she says.

“What about our stuff?” He whispers. “All my stuff’s back… back there.”

She stands, walks over to his side, and takes gentle hold of both his shoulders. He lowers his head, as if struggling to stay awake.

“If my interpretation of what the doctors said is correct, you will return there to get your belongings only with a police escort.”

Dave forces his eyes open again. “Sweet.”

“Indeed,” she says.

Carmela pops her head through the part in the curtain. “If I may take a few moments of your time, Ms. Lalonde?”

“Certainly.”

She rises, promises to come back as soon as she can, and walks out into the ER proper, heels clicking against the tile floor.

After she’s gone, Dave jabs you in the side. “I cannot. Fucking. Believe.”

Although he hasn’t fully articulated what he cannot believe, you say, “me neither.”

“We don’t have to go back.”

“I know.”

“We’re gonna have, like, fucking cops if we have to go back.”

“Yep.” You stretch your arms toward the ceiling. “Maybe they’ll taze him or something.”

You think of Bro shouting, _“Don’t taze me bro!”_ at a bunch of police officers and bite back the urge to laugh.

Okay, you’re definitely also stoned on the good stuff.

Dave nods off again, and you keep watch. Someone has to. With your brother next to you, you are here, indelibly here in this room that reeks of antiseptic and teems with the cacophony of beeping monitors, and you are not going to let anything happen to Dave.

Not ever. Never again.

Ms. Lalonde finally returns with a stack of papers in a blue folder tucked under one arm. She gives the two of you the thumbs up sign.

“You’re free.”

Then, she opens the folder, and starts explaining all the paperwork.

“These’re your prescriptions, which I can swing by and get at the 24 hour pharmacy on the way home. These’re discharge papers, and referrals for the both of you. Psych referrals. And physical therapy for Dave, too.”

You open your mouth to argue that you do not need a fucking psych referral, but decide better of it.

“CPS is going to visit my apartment at some point, just to make sure everything’s in order and I’m a responsible parent. Don’t both of you laugh at once,” she says with a twinge of an emotion you recognize all-too-readily. Self-loathing.

Neither you nor Dave says a thing.

“…also, the police want to speak with you.”

Of course, you understand why, but you don’t think you can handle any more interrogation.

“So I told them, absolutely not right now. Not until you two get a full night’s sleep.” She glances at her watch. “Or a full day’s sleep, as it is. They have enough physical evidence against Bro, either way, but…”

She shakes Dave awake.

“Anyway, let’s get out of here.”

Carmela wishes you two luck as you leave. You want to thank her for everything, but words… words aren’t there. You go with Dave the next time he goes to Terezi’s, and do it then. Thank her for listening. For assisting you.

You follow Ms. Lalonde away from the hospital, and a few blocks to the parking lot. She unlocks the doors to her car. You and Dave sit down in the back, and Ms. Lalonde surveys you in the rearview mirror, from the driver’s seat.

“Buckle up, guys.”

She shifts her car into gear, pulls out of her space, pays the guy at the booth, and starts driving to the pharmacy.

You feel yourself slipping back under. A glance at Dave informs you that he has knocked out yet again. _And if Dave is safe, and you’re safe, then maybe you can just…_

You close your eyes.

When you open them once more, it’s your little brother rousing you. You look around and vaguely recognize this as the garage for Roxy and Rose’s apartment building.

You open the car door, and stumble toward where you think the elevator is, Dave attempting to stagger after you. 

Ms. Lalonde takes hold of Dave’s left arm, and your right, and manages to support you both.

“Little unsteady?” She asks, not really expecting the answer. “That’ll be the meds. I promise you two can go to sleep as soon as we get upstairs.”

But that’s not quite how it happens.

Ms. Lalonde unlocks and opens her front door, and before she can so much as put her bag down, a blonde young woman whose head comes up to just below your shoulder dashes forth and embraces you as tightly as she can.

“Holy shit, you’re alive!” She exclaims.

You won’t let go until she does.

Your neck feels wet all of a sudden, and when you pull away, it turns out that Roxy is also crying, eyeliner streaming down her face. You wipe at it and manage to do fuck all besides smudge it further.

Rose is, unsurprisingly, more dignified about the whole thing, standing just behind her sister. Two tears roll down her cheeks, and Dave catches her in a one-armed hug. You think she might join Roxy and Dave in the great sob-off of 2010, but she maintains her composure for the most part.

“We were worried about you,” she says mildly.

“Super worried,” Roxy adds.

Ms. Lalonde puts everything down on the end table, and sighs at her daughters. 

“It’s five-thirty in the morning.”

Roxy throws her hands up. “So?”

“How are you going to make it to class like this, mi vida?”

Rose pipes up that they’ve pulled all-nighters all the time, and come away perfectly fine. After a fleeting look of guilt, Ms. Lalonde shakes her head.

“You two are not going to school like this,” she insists. “You’ve all had hard nights. I’ll sign absence notes for each of you.”

Oh shit. That’s right. If Ms. Lalonde’s your guardian now, she’s going to be the one to put her signature on all that stuff. You and Dave had become downright fucking proficient at forging Bro’s signature, but…

Maybe you won’t need that skill anymore.

She gestures to Roxy and Rose. “You two. Bed. Now.”

Roxy seems as if she might protest, but Rose pulls her little sister after her before she can say another word.

Then, Ms. Lalonde turns to you and Dave.

“For now, you can stay in my room. As long as you don’t mind sharing a bed with each other.”

You don’t give a shit, and you don’t think he does either.

He pretty much says so, verbatim.

“Where will you sleep?” You ask her.

She points to the sofa, and unfolds a blanket that had been set down upon one end. Before you can object, she waves you off.

“It’s no problem,” she says. “I’ve slept there plenty of times.”

The insistence in her eyes betrays that she’s adamant about this part. There will be no convincing her of an alternate course of action. You watch her make a bed for herself on the sofa. Then, once she lies down, you stand over her. 

It feels a little weird, but you kiss her on the forehead.

“Thank you,” you tell her.

You leave without giving her time to say or do anything else.

You go into your room, _her room_ , and lie down next to Dave. He’s down for the count again, and lying next to him, you fall into an uneasy slumber.

_Safe?_

_Are you really…?_

You hope so.

Later, the sound of something rummaging, scrambling, under the bed rouses you.

 _Monsters?_ You think stupidly. _Bro?_

Silently, you open your eyes, the early afternoon sun streaming through the window. 

There’s Ms. Lalonde, with a giant bottle of liquor in her hand. She spares one last, lingering glance at you two, and then absconds with it.

Great. You knew this was a bad idea. You’ve gone and stressed her out by essentially forcing her to keep you. You don’t blame her for wanting a drink.

Mouse-quiet, you follow her into the kitchen, where, instead of mixing herself a drink, she uncaps the bottle and tips the whole thing into the sink. 

She notices you noticing her, but says nothing. After dropping the bottle into the recycling, she fixes you something to eat. A grilled cheese sandwich, slightly burned, and some mixed vegetables. You don’t mind.

Still better than the shit Bro used to prepare. He can’t cook to save his life, so he ordered takeout for the most part. On the off chance he did try to prepare you an actual meal, you and Dave exchanged glances to the effect of, _“this shit should be outlawed by the Geneva convention.”_

You thank her for the food.

“I was just trying to clean house a little,” Ms. Lalonde explains. She peers into the recycling bin, and so do you, noticing several empty alcohol bottles therein. “I haven’t had any of this in ages, but I kept it around. Insurance, just in case.”

“But I don’t need that kind of insurance. Haven’t needed it for more than a hundred days.” She swallows, struggling with her resolve. “I think it’s time I acknowledged that.”

“Yeah, I get you,” you reply. You never drank - not your style of coping mechanism - but you sort of understand where she’s coming from. “D’you want help?”

“You should be asleep. The others are asleep.”

“D’you want help?” you repeat.

She says nothing for a moment, and finally nods.

“If you wish.”

You walk into the living room, cross to the liquor cabinet, and grab up all the remaining bottles. You give them to her, and watch as she, wistfully, dumps them out one by one, staring down the drain long after the contents are gone.

“The hallway closet,” she murmurs to you. “I think that’s the last of it.”

“Right.”

Before you leave to go hunting for booze bottles, she taps you on the back.

“You’re a good kid, you know.”

You stare at her with nothing less than slack-jawed awe.

First off, you are not a kid; you are almost eighteen. Second off, you are not good. You are not anywhere in the general zip code of good. If you had been good, maybe you would have done something about Bro sooner.

“Thanks, Ms. Lalonde.”

You round up the last of the bottles and hand them over. Once the last one is empty, her shoulders sag. She covers her face with her hands, leaning against the sink for dear life.

She’s crying. 

You kiss her on the forehead again.

“You really are, Dirk. Such a good child. You and Dave both. You two, Roxy, and Rose.”

You’re not good.

You’re not good.

They are, but you are not.

You are smart. You are resourceful. You are adaptable, but you are not good.

That’s when you start crying, too, bowled over by wordless, hiccuping sobs. 

Ms. Lalonde, though she’s almost a foot shorter than you, holds onto you through the worst of it. She rubs your back in soothing little circles.

“Just let it out, Dirk,” she says. “It’s okay to let it out.”

It’s taken you seventeen years and ten months.

Seventeen years and ten months to reach somewhere safe. To get Dave somewhere safe. 

Seventeen years and ten months to figure out how to cry.

She inclines her face toward the refrigerator. “Still hungry?”

You shake your head. You wipe your eyes.

Ms. Lalonde clears the table, and sets to washing your plate.

Perhaps, at last, you’ve found a real guardian.

A _parent._

A _mother?_

She sits across from you at the kitchen table, picking at her own bowl of farina.

“Let me know if you need anything.”

You won’t, but you can. That’s the thing, the most significant part of this. A door has opened to you for the first time in…

_seventeen years and ten months._

You can open up to her, if you wish. If you need to. She won’t run. She won’t abandon you. She won’t tell you to man up, or to stop acting like such a pussy.

So you take the medication when she brings it to you. 

You let her put you back to bed. 


	2. do you find it alright, my dragonfly?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was gonna be a one shot but then I realized there was more Strilonde stuff I wanted to write.  
> So I guess it'll update sporadically, then.

_**November 2010 - Dirk Strider** _

Hair tied back in a ponytail, Ms. Lalonde cooks something called tostones, and you stand there in the kitchen watching her. You feel better when you’re occupied, less like an an intruder in your own body. Like Roxy, and Rose, come to think of it, Ms. Lalonde betrays a certain nervousness when she isn’t in the middle of doing something, so she seems to catch onto your tendencies wordlessly.

She starts explaining without any particular prompting, exactly what she’s doing.

“You fry the plantains until they’re gold, and then you take them out.”

She takes them out with the tongs and places them onto a plate that she’s already put a piece of paper towel on. She turns down the heat on the oil in the frying pan.

“Hand me a bowl? The bottom has to be flat, though.”

You dig around in one of the cabinets until you find one, and hand it to her. One at a time, she mashes each slice almost flat with the bottom of the bowl. With a smile, she passes it back to you before she’s finished with all of them.

“You could probably do this part, you know,” she tells you.

If she says so.

You repeat her motions, and yours, well to be frank, they kind of suck. Sometimes the plantain slices come apart as you mash them. She keeps saying encouraging things to you, though, so you’re too busy mentally refuting her to really focus on how awful you are at this.

While you’re ruminating, the bowl slips out of your grasp and hits the floor with a great clatter.

It doesn’t break, though, just makes a lot of racket.

Ms. Lalonde stops talking as if someone muted the volume on her voice. When you turn to look back at her, her hands are shaking, and her eyes have gone wide, pupils dilated to a fearful size. She takes several steps back.

Great.

Dirk, you are the pinnacle of competence.

You don’t know whether touching her will make it better or worse, so you sort of… wave your hand in front of her eyes for a few seconds? Something like that.

“Ms. Lalonde?”

That brings her back a little. She blinks at you several times.

“I got lost for a second,” she says. She picks the bowl up, rinses it off, and finishes mashing the last of the plantains as if nothing happened. “You get used to things being a certain way, and even after they’re not, you still react as if they are…”

“I know. It’s okay,” you reply. “Sorry I suck so bad.”

You make a mental note of that. Loud noises. Loud noises are on her Nope List.

Your therapist had you make a list of things that trigger you, and after you and Dave - who have the same therapist - sullenly agreed that the word “trigger” made your think of Karkat’s brother and his trivial bullshit, you started calling it the Nope List.

Sudden movements, anyone brandishing anything at you, that sort of thing.

The second thing isn’t on your list - you’ve spent the last three years of your life on fencing team, after all - but it’s on Dave’s. Raise a knife in front of him the wrong way and that kid will lose his shit. Not visibly, because he's Dave, but you're his brother, so you can always tell. 

You keep your foil where he cannot see it. Where he’ll never find it, even by accident.

Ms. Lalonde puts a few of the mashed slices back in the pan to fry, and then sits down in the chair next to the microwave. She pulls a medication bottle out some cabinet, takes out a pill, and puts it into her mouth. She grimaces as she swallows it down.

“I hate taking these,” she says.

You think of your own medication, in the bathroom cabinet with your brother’s. Your brother needs it more than you do.

You can deal with your shit, but your psychiatrist - _yeah, you have one of those guys now, too_ \- begged to differ, so you’re stuck taking them until the dude with the medical degree says you don’t need to anymore.

Which could be _years_ , as Rose informed you. And Rose is the one who knows everything there is to know about psychology, so she’s probably right.

Shit’s supposed to help with nightmares, which you have, but you can fucking deal with those without clonidine, so fuck that guy. You are no stranger to getting three hours of sleep when you can, and operating mostly functional the rest of the time. A majority of your nightmares have to do with losing Dave in some shape, form, or fashion, so once you turn over and see that he’s in the same room as you, and recall that Bro cannot get to him, you’re pretty much fine.

Pretty much.

Because of that and the medication you get more sleep nowadays.

You don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, this being Senior Year, otherwise known as Crunch Time, or You’d Better Get A Full Scholarship To College Otherwise You’re Not Going, Dirk.

More sleep means less time to do your work. But you dissociate less with a full, what, like six and a half hours of sleep? Which means you’re more useful. It balances out, you suppose.

Roxy tells you that she has dreams of failing everything and not getting into any of her schools, but she’s the salutatorian of your class, so…

Whenever she comes into your room to sit at the foot of your bed, you remind her of that. And when she’s tired again, you half-drag, half-carry her back to her room. 

“This was so much easier when I was wasted,” she’ll occasionally remark. However, since Ms. Lalonde spent a whole period of her life on a fairly consistent bender, she can smell liquor from twenty feet away, putting paid to any notions Roxy has about bungee jumping off the wagon. 

(“Oh, you’re working with trig functions?” She asked her daughters, as Rose struggled through her worksheet on trigonometric function derivatives, and Roxy zipped through the assignment so fast that she’d already moved onto something harder. Like English. “I remember when you two were taking trigonometry the first time.”

Then, she thought for a second, remembered that no, she really did not, she was drunk for their entire sophomore year, that was the year that they had to act as _her_ guardian, and Bro had to come check on her half the time to prevent her from either dying or seizing, and burst into tears.

“Mom,” Roxy said, one hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Mom, it’s fine. We’re fine.” And then, when Ms. Lalonde wouldn’t or couldn’t stop, Roxy’s words seemed to blend into each other, _“Momwe’regonnabefineit’sgonnabeokay, shhhhh…”_

Rose joined in with her own reassurances, and that seemed to bring Ms. Lalonde back to terra firma.)

“Don’t go down my path, mi vida,” Ms. Lalonde said to Roxy, when the latter came home visibly tipsy a few weeks ago. “And don’t drink with your medication, that’s _dangerous_.”

Rose shot Roxy one of her patented _see-I-told-you-so_ looks and left it at that.

So Roxy is now 95% dry and 75% miserable. She says it gets easier with time, because, “all you gotta do is get some fuckin’ momentum going, which reminds me, I gotta finish that shit for Mr. Cao’s class before my goddamn average drops.”

AP Physics C is going to be the death of you and her, if college early decision letters aren’t.

By the time you’re done thinking, the tostones are done. 

Ms. Lalonde shakes you to attention. She seems calmer now.

“They’re too hot now,” she says, gesturing to the plate, “but you can have some with lunch.”

Yeah, lunch, because you’re home sick from school. Sick because you skipped your clonidine last night (you forgot), had a dissociative nightmare freakout thing, scared the fuck out of everyone in the apartment, and all of them, even Dave, thought you could afford to miss a day of class in the morning.

 _(Okay, maybe the guy with the medical degree has a point.)_

Dirk, you need to get your shit together.

You take a bag of green beans out of the freezer, and set to nuking those for the appropriate amount of time, ‘cause you probably can’t fuck _that_ up. Ms. Lalonde thanks you, and calls you a good kid for like the nine thousandth time.

Instead of doing your usual thing, insisting that you’re not, you just nod.

What else can you do?


End file.
